Have you ever wondered how your food gets from the field to your dining room table? It all comes down to the food supply chain and how items move from one link to another. So let’s take a moment to lay it out, and for that I’m going to use chocolate as an example, specifically how the simple cacao bean gets turned into your favorite guilty treat.
Let’s start by getting into how the chocolate production process works.
- Cacao beans are harvested. This is when they’re taken off the trees, and is only done twice a year. Cacao bean sourcing is a whole thing; you want the right beans to get the best result.
- Next, they’re fermented. You do this by splitting the beans in half, then laying them out for eight days. This way they won’t germinate.
- Cacao is then transformed into cocoa. This is done at a processing plant, where the beans are cleaned and roasted, then put through a special machine to expose the cocoa nibs.
- The nibs are ground into chocolate liquor (which isn’t actually liquor). Confusing, right? But chocolate liquor contains cocoa butter and chocolate presscake, which can be separated or kept whole.
- Chocolate liquor is combined with other ingredients. This is stuff like vanilla, sugar, and sometimes milk, and it’s all aerated together in a process called “conching,” which is pretty critical to taking out the bitterness. It’s all part of the chocolate production process.
Going through the chocolate supply chain
So now you’ve got yourself some chocolate, which at this stage of the game is called “couverture.” Usually this is in a liquid state, but it can be solid if that’s what the customer wants. For the sake of this piece, let’s say that it’s a liquid, which means it needs to be shipped in barrels.
Getting those barrels of sweet, sweet chocolate to its destination takes time. Most of the countries that start the chocolate supply chain are in Africa or South America, although Belgium is the No. 5 producer. This means the couverture is shipped, usually by boat, to its destination.
That last step is where chocolate manufacturing logistics comes into play. Some chocolate goes straight to retailers where they put the couverture through a tempering process to give the bars the taste and snap customers expect, then put it into molds. Other times it goes to another manufacturer who does the same thing, but they then resell it to retailers and that takes us through the logistics of chocolate distribution.
Supply Chain Efficiency in Food
Of course, all of this deals with food, and if something goes wrong in raw material sourcing, the chocolate production process or the general food supply chain, then the materials could go bad, which makes them inedible and unusable. Supply chain efficiency in food is a huge issue for manufacturers, which means people like me need to keep the food supply chain smooth and efficient. Otherwise, products go to waste and nobody wants that.
But supply chain sustainability in food is also important. One of the bigger food supply chain challenges that people in the industry come up against is making sure we can keep this process going reliably and efficiently. This means that food supply chain management is kind of a science. There’s a lot of thinking and research that goes into this process, otherwise it doesn’t go right.
Then there’s the dark secret of the process, which is specific to chocolate but, unfortunately, extends to other areas as well. Some of the sources for cacao beans aren’t the best, and some of their workers are exploited for their labor. Fortunately though, there are suppliers like Tony’s Chocolonely. They only use exploitation-free suppliers, and their goal is to rid the industry of those kinds of problems entirely.
It’s Complex but Efficient
The food supply chain is a beast to wrap your head around, but once you do, you’ll see that it’s a pretty amazing feat. Just think about all of the things it takes to get that chocolate bar to your mouth. It’s pretty amazing, right?
